In a letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), is calling for the agency to immediately release 2018 Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) eligibility information, including exemptions under the low-volume threshold and special status as non-patient-facing or hospital-based.
MGMA represents 40,000 medical practice executives and 12,500 organizations that deliver nearly half the healthcare in the United States. MGMA notes that while quality reporting for 2018 began January 1, CMS has yet to tell anyone who is included and excluded from MIPS in 2018.
CMS published its calendar-year 2018 Quality Payment Program (QPP) final rule, under the MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015) law back in early November.
While MGMA recommended that CMS maintain a 90-day reporting period for the quality component of MIPS, CMS increased the 2018 MIPS quality reporting period from 90 days and is mandating full-year quality reporting. In the letter, Anders Gilberg, senior vice president, government affairs at MGMA, wrote that expanding the quality reporting period from 90 days to full-year reporting requires immediate action by physician practices.
“We are extremely concerned that despite being held accountable for reporting that began more than a week ago, physicians do not have basic eligibility information to determine whether they are even included in the MIPS program. For medical group practices that manage reporting for dozens or even hundreds of clinicians under the program, this information is vital to the complex clinical and administrative coordination necessary to participate in MIPS,” Gilberg wrote.
Gilberg also wrote that MGMA supports CMS’ goal of reducing clinician burden and “believes equipping physician groups with clear and timely MIPS program information is essential toward that aim.”
“We urge the agency not to repeat the delays of 2017, during which eligibility notifications were release in late April,” he wrote.
